A majority of Canadian taxpayers support defunding the Canadian Broadcasting Centre entirely or in part.
According to a poll commissioned by True North and conducted by One Persuasion, 61.1% of Canadians support defunding the CBC in some capacity.
When it comes to completely cutting off the CBC from taxpayer funds, 29.2% of Canadians supported the idea. Meanwhile, 31.9% of Canadians want to see “some parts of the CBC, like English language television or CBC News” defunded while the rest is maintained.
As for supporters of CBC funding, less than four in ten taxpaying Canadians, 38.9%, want to continue to fully fund the public broadcaster.
The poll was commissioned by the True North Centre for Public Policy and was conducted by One Persuasion Inc. An online panel of 1,005 Canadians was polled between August 2-7, 2024. The results were balanced and weighted to match the demographics of Canada. While an online panel does not have a margin of error, an equivalent poll of this size has a margin of error of 3.1% nineteen times out of twenty.
Younger Canadians aged 18 to 34 were the most likely to want to partially defund the public broadcaster, with over half supporting cuts prioritizing core parts such as English TV and CBC News.
About 70% of Canadians aged 18-34 support either completely defunding the CBC or making cuts to its core parts.
Males aged 55 and up were the most likely to support the status quo, with 49% saying it should continue to be fully funded by taxpayers. 40% of females over 55 said the same.
Those with a college or trade school level education were the most likely to call for a complete defunding of the CBC, with 36% saying it should receive no taxpayer support and 32% saying it should receive cuts while maintaining some programming.
Those with a postgraduate level of education were the most likely, 46%, to support the status quo of full funding and the least likely, 20%, to want to stop paying for the CBC entirely.
Only half of those who voted for the NDP and Bloc Quebec in the 2021 election, 49% and 50%, respectively, and 55% of those who voted Liberal in the same year said they would support a full continuation of funding.
For the NDP and BQ voters, 36% of each party thought the CBC should be partially defunded, while 30% of the Liberals said they would support the same. Around 15% of the NDP, BQ and Liberal voters said they would like to see the CBC defunded entirely.
Nearly half, 49%, of Canadians who voted for the NDP, BQ and Liberal in 2021 want to defund the CBC in some capacity.
Half of those who voted Conservative in 2021 supported a total cessation of tax funding to the CBC, while 29% wanted to partially defund the public broadcaster.
“Giving the state broadcaster more than $1 billion every year is a waste of taxpayers’ money, so the government should defund the CBC,” Franco Terrazzano, the federal director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, told True North in an email.
“The CBC will cost taxpayers $1.4 billion this year, which would cover the cost of more than 80,000 families’ grocery bills for an entire year,” he said. “Taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to fund a media company, independent media shouldn’t be forced to fund their competitors, and the government shouldn’t be in the business of paying journalists’ salaries. For all these reasons, the CBC shouldn’t get a single penny from taxpayers.”